Data communications over a variety of networks, such as packet-based networks, mobile telephone networks and others have increased at an astonishing rate over recent years. Generally, the affordability and availability of computers, telephones, wireless devices and other network access appliances has made their use prevalent in a variety of applications. Further, the availability network access, such as Internet access, in more environments and involving a multitude of communication mediums has increased dramatically, such that network access has become widely available and convenient.
As access to packet-based networks such as the Internet becomes easier, convenient and readily available, the demand for the use of these networks for transferring media content such as images, audio, email, video and text has increased. In this regard, the number of network subscribers, media content providers, and requests by those subscribers for media content transfer, streaming media content and other content are growing exponentially. Users are increasingly relying upon such networks for media content transfer, and are further placing higher expectations on their ability to access content at different locations using a multitude of different devices in a flexible, controllable manner. For instance, Internet access is evolving in application to implementation with a multitude of devices, such as mobile telephones, portable media playback devices, home audio and/or video media devices and systems, navigation systems, personal wireless devices and of course, notebook and desktop computers.
Media content (e.g., audio, images or video) has evolved in application, is often stored electronically and is readily transferable over packet-based networks as described above. For example, the storage of music and/or video in rewritable electronic media has become a popular method in which to maintain and access media collections. For video applications, digital recording and storage of television and personal video collections has become popular, as has the streaming (via the Internet) of stored video. Similarly, audio is often stored in electronic media, transferred to portable devices or streamed via the Internet using a packet-based approach to provide the audio to an Internet device such as a computer.
In many applications, remote access to media content by users owning or subscribing to the media content, or by guests with whom a user wishes to share her or his content, is desirably flexible and controllable. Further, such access is desirably implemented with a multitude of different types of media playback devices. For example, owners of digital audio content often desire access to their content with a variety of different devices, such those described in connection with example Internet access devices above. However, previous approaches to media access and sharing have been limited by the relative inability to controllably provide media content, and to provide media content that is accessible with different device types.
Effectively and efficiently making content and other media content readily accessible across a myriad of playback devices has been challenging in the face of the advancement of technologies and trade channels that use or could use network-based media transfer.